Microsoft's live.com Email Wiped My Emails

logged in to Microsoft's live.com email service today, only to find that all my email there are gone. Apparently, they did this in 2013-07 when merging with hotmail.

apparently, when they did the merge, they probably sent out a email warning in advance, but i haven't been using it so i didn't see it. And, after the merge, hotmail emails are intact, live.com emails are killed, because it's new, something like that.

it's hard to search for this, but i found a few forum messages about it. ⁖

in the picture, you see my keyboard with F13 F14 etc keys. But on X11, the F keys after F12 has keysym of XF86Tools XF86Launch1 XF86Launch2 etc for some reason. F13 is XF86Tools.

One of the them, the F13 XF86Tool, doesn't work. The key works in emacs, as well shows well in xev properly, but in (Ubuntu) xfce X11 window manager, if you set that key to something (such as max window), it has no effect, but using F14 or other works. Still no idea why.

using xmodmap, i was able to set XF86Tool to normal F13, then i can map F13 to commands i want. See: Linux: xmodmap Tutorial ⌨.

Lit Wakefield argued in the comment, saying that keyboard is more efficient. See his comment at bottom. He reasons, that “vimium”, “pentadactyl” (which are vi-like bindings), can be more efficient than mouse.

good exposition. But i think that's just false.

let's say, on a web page there are 10 links, scattered around. And, i need to click them, in specific order. Am sure mouse is faster than vimium.

Also, here comes the question of effort to learn and ease of using. It's often possible, to create a system, using a comparatively naturally less efficient input device, but the system is such a design it takes 1 year to learn/master, then after this 1 year training, he who uses this inferior input device will be more efficient in operation than someone using a mouse the first week. Then, do you still say that inferior device is more efficient? One analogous example of this is input system of Chinese. There are lots of them, and the ones requires a lot training are in general more efficient than the brainless phonetic system using english alphabets (pinyin). Similar can be said of stenographic system vs normal qwerty typing.

Python MySQL libs: MySQLdb and PyMySQL

Python has 2 interface lib for MySQL: MySQLdb and PyMySQL. (as far as i learned)
The MySQLdb is the workhorse, involving C drivers. PyMySQL is pure python, with advantage of simpler installation and easy to integrate in any OS.

PyMySQL and MySQLdb provide the same functionality - they are both database connectors. The difference is in the implementation where MySQLdb is a C extension and PyMySQL is pure Python.

There are a few reasons to try PyMySQL:

it might be easier to get running on some systems

it works with PyPy

it can be “greened” and works with gevent

The proper way to use it with Django is to import it and tell it to impersonate MySQLdb in your top-level file, usually manage.py. Put the following code at the very top of your manage.py (or whatever file you call when starting your server):

MySQLdb, is a C extension module that has a reputation of being difficult to compile, especially if you're on a Mac. Additionally, end-users need to wait for new binaries to be compiled for each new release of Python, and MySQLdb will never run on Jython, IronPython, or PyPy (without something like cpyext or IronClad). We also maintain 100% compatibility between Python 2 and Python 3, so all advancements made on the 2.x trunk will be immediately available on Python 3.

Regression Testing?

in software, there's this term “Regression Testing”, coming into being in past few years. Regression thy mom's �ss. Xah's edict: if ur software needs testing, u r a idiot.

what society overwhelmingly asks for is snake oil. Of course, the snake oil has the most impressive names — otherwise you would be selling nothing — like “Structured Analysis and Design”, “Software Engineering”, “Maturity Models”, “Management Information Systems”, “Integrated Project Support Environments” “Object Orientation” and “Business Process Re-engineering” (the latter three being known as IPSE, OO and BPR, respectively). — Edsger W Dijkstra (1930 〜 2002), in EWD 1175: The strengths of the academic enterprise

my statement has sugar topping, but there are 2 levels.

① software need no testing, but provably correct. This is along the line of EWD's train of thought, which i subscribe to.

② in today's software, we are not there yet, or perhaps can never be, given industrial and social causes. However, today's software testing, in particular those Agile f��ks, are here, because 60% programers are idiots, don't know what they are doing. And, this is caused by social reasons.